Few of us can imagine what it would be like if a suicide bomber detonated explosives in a heavily populated American city. That scenario is at the center of Exile, Richard North Patterson's provocative new novel. Legal thrillers and political dramas always have been Patterson's forte.

Consumers looking to cash in those holiday bookstore gift cards will find plenty of new titles to choose from in early 2007. Perennially popular authors including Norman Mailer, Jane Smiley, Anita Shreve and Alice Hoffman have books coming out, and there are plenty of potential sleeper hits, says Bill Nasshan of Borders.

For eight years, Michele Martinez hung out with criminals. As a federal prosecutor in New York City, she battled Mexican cocaine cartels smuggling drug money out of the country, fought Burmese warlords secreting hundreds of kilos of heroin into the USA and got the upper hand on crack dealers operating in American cities.